A representative of the Ukrainian national church, Mykola Kryhin, declared this warning to Russian Orthodox Christians in Ukraine: “If you get rid of your Russian mind-set and accept a Ukrainian reality then the doors of the church are open to you … But if you don’t, then we will not accept you.” He said these words in light of the recent firing of a priest named Ilya Solkan who was loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. For twenty years, Solkan served in a parish in the small village of Blystavytsya outside of Kiev, but he was voted out by a church council because of his sympathies for Russia. “Being a priest is my God-given calling,” he said in an interview. According to the New York Times:

Villagers say that Mr. Solkan for years had peppered his sermons with expressions of support for the Kremlin’s foreign policy — for example, saying that Moscow was right when it annexed Crimea illegally in 2014 — and that he had regularly spoken to them in the Russian language rather than in Ukrainian.

“Russia was always using the church as a tool of propaganda influence and, as the inhabitants of this village, it was unacceptable for us,” said Zoya Dehtyar, the head of the parish council, which voted him out.

Mr. Solkan declined to comment on his politics, fearing that anything he said would land him in trouble.
His branch of the church is under broad pressure in Ukraine.
A bill is going through Ukraine’s Parliament that would outlaw any religious organization supported by a religious body from a state that has perpetrated aggression against the country. Few doubt the target is Russia, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has spoken in the bill’s favor.

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Mr. Solkan did not attend the Easter services and he has not been back to the church. A representative of the national church who now oversees the parish, Mykola Kryhin, said it would not be easy for Mr. Solkan to regain the village’s trust.

“If you get rid of your Russian mind-set and accept a Ukrainian reality then the doors of the church are open to you,” Mr. Kryhin said. “But if you don’t, then we will not accept you.”

This “Ukrainian reality” obviously entails the reverence for Ukrainian war-criminals and murderers who are hailed has heroes within the Ukrainian paradigm, such as Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Andriey Melnyk — people who collaborated with Nazis and whose organization, the OUN, murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews.